Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

xpost wasn't k3v's either

you have this tendency when you feel strongly about something to immediately and disingenuously insinuate that your opponent is saying this thing that you know they are actually not saying or implying

has to be one of the dumbest things I’ve read on ilx recently lol. take a nap or something

Thread title delivers, I guess.

Doesn't deliver pizza though

my implication is that we aacept a certain amount of risk and death in allowing ppl to do daily life activites and whether you think it's acceptable to close schools (or ban guns, or drugs, or fossil fuels) etc etc in order to reduce risk and death is not an objective question, and there's tradeoffs involved

yeah the kinetics of viral spread complicate that a bit

great counterarguments, guys! you really engaged with the substance of what i was saying, and i feel so ashamed to have disappointed you now

Some local councils in London have been trying to shut schools only to be told, "Don't you dare!" by the government.

did i misunderstand what he meant by numerator and denominator?

i figured he meant when the outcome is so gruesome?

I hadn’t seen his posts when I posted mine but I was essentially stating what neanderthal was a different way. the percentage of people who die does not really matter when the absolute number is so high

oh, okay. well, i misunderstood. but that's not in the realm of what i'd call a fact, that's more like your opinion maaaaan

It's currently the third leading cause of death in the US, no? Right behind heart disease and cancer, neither of which is a virus iirc. And the overwhelming majority of Americans haven't had it (yet), so… things could obv. get much, much worse, and we don't really want that, do we?

What would an acceptable death toll look like iyo?

what's weird is that i actually agree w you guys. i would rather close schools than close nothing, and since the state can close schools but can't close businesses, suppose we have to close schools

what's extra weird to me is we can't have a rational discussion abt the pros and cons of it without you guys acting like it's some kind of obvious foregone conclusion, not to mention the yr weird horror abt ever being in agreement w someone who voted for the other guy

who cares what's acceptable to me, i'm not in a position to make decisions abt it

you have this tendency when you feel strongly about something to immediately and disingenuously insinuate that your opponent is saying this thing that you know they are actually not saying or implying

― Lover of Nixon (or LON for short) (Neanderthal), Thursday, 17 December 2020 21:08 (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is hardly, tbf, a novel approach around here

tlg, we can def talk about the pros and cons, I'm just trying to understand how many deaths you deem acceptable, if we're going to quantify this crisis (and we can't help but go there, whether we like it or not). 300k is a fuckton seeing as only about, what, 10% of the US population has had it so far? And this assumes partial lockdown, face masks and other preventive measures across at least some states. Fwiw here in Quebec where primary and secondary schools did stay open during the fall semester, it seems to have yielded approximately 25% of all cases since September, according to the latest data, i.e. half the amount of work-related cases and on par with the fallout of illegal house parties and the like. Maybe it was worth it, maybe it wasn't. Maybe other policies would have worked better, such as forcing everyone to WFH whenever possible instead of merely counting on the good will of our philanthropic employers. All I know is that hospitals are now edging closer and closer to being at capacity, and the post-Xmas period is going to be a nightmare despite the fact that the ban on indoor gatherings will not be lifted during the holidays.

i don't bother making judgements abt how many deaths is acceptable

it's a dumb question so you can ask but you're not going to get an answer because i don't have one

it's a dumb question

lol ok, I guess that settles it then.

i don't see how that settles anything but ok

i mean do YOU have a number in mind that's ok? or do only i have to answer that question?

time to weigh up QALYs on both sides of this debate

I tend to think approximately ten times the seasonal flu's average fatality rate even after the implementation of exceedingly rare preventive measures across much of the known world is kind of a big deal, certainly a bigger deal than kids not going to school for a few months (which btw would have been a blessing for me and done wonders for my mental health back when I was still in high school, if you'll allow this bit of anecdotal evidence). My hunch is that the main reason schools stayed open almost everywhere is so parents could continue working as they normally do to ensure the survival of our God-given economy. YMMV, etc.

so basically what you're saying is you don't have an answer for your own rhetorical questions, let alone my serious ones, and are instead content to fall back on sarcastically attempting to shame me. ok!

How is that not an answer to my own rhetorical question? I'm basically stating that 300k *is* too much imo. And I did engage with your arguments beyond the surface snark, even though you deem my responses unsatisfactory. Are you ok? Because this is such a bizarre hill to die on, and in *this* manner.

This is hardly, tbf, a novel approach around here

― spruce springclean (darraghmac), Thursday, December 17, 2020 4:34 PM bookmarkflaglink

Lol well yes, yr right there

Im all for tlg going in on this thread tbf pom, seems the place for it like

lmao who's dying?

oh no a bunch of internet strangers with bad opinions might in turn think my opinions are bad, the horror, how will i ever be able to rely on the msg board strangers for emotional support / ego stroking ever again (oh wait i don't)

anyway, it's not a bizarre hill for me at all, because i'm a high school teacher, and my students are suffering because of school closures, and that's not ok with me. believe me, i'm fine

anyway your question was not "how much is too much" your question was literally "how much you deem acceptable" and you didn't answer that question, so that is why your response is not an answer to your rhetorical question

I tend to think approximately ten times the seasonal flu's average fatality rate even after the implementation of exceedingly rare preventive measures across much of the known world is kind of a big deal

i never said it wasn't a big deal. school closures and business closures are a big deal too.

certainly a bigger deal than kids not going to school for a few months (which btw would have been a blessing for me and done wonders for my mental health back when I was still in high school, if you'll allow this bit of anecdotal evidence)

great argument! seem to recall someone getting accused of "downplaying" somewhere on this thread ...

honestly though, you might be able to convince yourself i'm some kind of cryptofascist but do you think the good ppl at unicef are right-wingers?

https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/covid-19-unicef-warns-continued-damage-learning-and-well-being-number-children

shit sucks

I just mean everything, all around.

brimstone otm

sulfur to say, yes otm

:(

The covidiots on this thread can go fuck themselves. Maybe someone close to you can die and then you can get some fucking perspective.

Sorry, sorry, I'm going to go analyze all the data to decide how much risk is acceptable.

yes perhaps if someone close to me died of COVID I'd want to harm children in order not to help stop the spread of COVID

look, yo, I don't think it's gonna help anything if we all just keep talkin' past each other in this thread. I wasn't posting specifically in service of demanding kids not be allowed to go to school, just taking severe umbrage at some of the dismissiveness in tlg's post (and the death rate focus of your posts, though less so your posts than tlg's).

the data doesn't say spread doesn't happen in schools - it says schools aren't superspreaders. that's great, and during calmer times of year, a good time of year for keeping schools open. but right now, pretty much the entire USA is a COVID hotspot, with record-breaking numbers. most of our data regarding school transmission came during times of year with much lower transmission/active cases - prior to November, we had just cracked 80,000 cases a day, which at the time, was our peak. we're at three times that right now. even if schools aren't superspreaders, they still pose a risk, so I don't believe in pooh-poohing the concerns of educators who are afraid to go to school right now.

that doesn't mean I think all schools should be closed, necessarily as forcing parents to find alternate arrangements for their kids for 7+ months is non-realistic, not to mention they're not going to be invested in their education. i don't know what the right answer is. seems more like two poison pills.

In the most recent NY contact-tracing data, 74% of spread resulted from household and social gatherings. About 1.5% originated with school employees and about 1% with k-12 students. It's certainly true that some spread happens in schools, it's just not a major driver. Plus there's evidence that students and teachers in remote learning get COVID around the same rate as students and teachers in person.

I have seen smart people mention that young children are systematically undertested and therefore underrepresented in contact tracing data. since they're already closed the question of opening schools is not something that really has a huge impact on my day to day so I haven't gotten too deep into the evidence myself, but like I said if you post the sources I will give them a look

Def not undertested in NYC, schools are a big source of testing.

We probably should just start a new thread for the original thread topic

That is certainly an uncool conservative belief.

can people please try to see their interlocutors' POV on the question of schools? it is a very hard question. we have two children. my youngest has now had his entire first semester of kindergarten on Zoom. he is a social child who thrives in classrooms, a leader among his peers and a good friend. the loss he is experiencing is heartbreaking. do I favor opening his school? no, I don't. I worked in health care for years, I believe in the most austere measures to contain the spread of infection. but I also have a job that allows me to give of my time to my kids, if I can manage to stay sane basically be "on" from 4 a.m. until I collapse at around 10. Most people don't have my job and they're suffering. Teachers who worked their whole lives to take an underpaid job shaping the future by teaching our kids are talking into a screen all day and wishing they could actually teach, wishing they could do what they take shitty pay for year-round. It's hard. When people hold opinions that are informed by their suffering, it would be nice if we could at least meet those people in a mood of compassion and understanding.

My hunch is that the main reason schools stayed open almost everywhere

One of the big ways that people are talking past each other on this is that advocates of open schools think schools are closed almost everywhere and advocates of keeping schools closed think they're open almost everywhere! And in fact it's bizarrely hard to get clean data about this -- I know what the story is for my kids' school district but I don't even know how to figure out what's happening elsewhere in the state except by going to individual county school board websites. Do YOU feel like you know what proportion of US K-12 schoolkids are attending class in person this week? I sure don't and I don't know how to find out. (Now somebody will show me up by Googling a reliable number but I promise, I have tried and failed.)

JCLC otm.
I've got a kid at school who also experienced the school closing before the summer and I was so anxious about just that relatively short break.
I've also had a friend die of Covid and really don't want to risk catching it as much as I can. Kid at school is my main risk and tbh I'm quite worried about January after the holiday free-for-all that we're not even participating in.
Schools in our area have generally had a few cases, but not ours. Yet. Other areas have had loads.